The most Popular Posts of the past seven days.

May 26, 2025

Hanceville, Alabama

Hanceville mayor promises to rebuild disbanded police department 'from the  ground up' - al.com

I'm sure you've followed the news from The Cullman County town of Hanceville....with the entire police department fired. The city council has also voted to

  • Suspend the department as they know it
  • Hire a new chief
  • Have the new chief hire new officers and dispatchers to rebuild the department
  • Form a committee to help select the new chief

blah blah blah....

So all of this was going on in the little town (population 3,217) and Hanceville Mayor Jim Sawyer and city council members knew nothing?

The mayor says "The City of Hanceville remains focused on building a stronger future for our citizens, and we thank our community for its understanding and support as we move forward together." 

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/article/alabama-police-evidence-missing-hanceville-fd8e2a71fa8546ff1d1bfdf6c732bb32

May 25, 2025

The Black Lives Matter Movement is Dying. Thank You tRump.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/george-floyd-trump.html

 Workers removing the BLM memorial from the street near the White House.

Workers remove the words Black Lives Matter from a street.

tRump SILENCE as bombs fall on Ukraine

 “The world may go into weekend mode, but the war does not stop for weekends or weekdays. This cannot be ignored,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram Sunday. “Silence of America and others around the world only emboldens Putin.”

 

tRump????? Nothing???

May 24, 2025

Birmingham Water Works Board

 

“While I understand I am well compensated ($446, 118), it’s less than I previously earned in legal fees from the BWWB while serving as outside counsel and less than my earning potential if I remained in private practice.”

Birmingham Water Works General Manager Mac Underwood 

Then, would you do the Birmingham Water Works customers a favor and go back to your old job?

SOURCE: HERE.

tRump Takes Credit!

 "You will become officers in the greatest and most powerful Army the world has ever known," Mr. President (told West Point Graduates), "And I know because I rebuilt the Army and I rebuilt the military, and we rebuilt it like nobody had ever rebuilt it before."

Source: HERE

 

...and that should be enough evidence to send the draft doger to a dementia ward. (Preferably in Russia, since he likes Putin so much!)

Mars!

 Curiosity exploring Gale Crater

At first glance, this view may look like a vista from a bluff in the southwestern United States.

But those aren't ordinary mountains in the distance. What appears to be a sierra is in fact the rim of an enormous crater on Mars, formed when an asteroid slammed into the Red Planet billions of years ago. The vantage point is from the slopes of the three-mile-tall Mount Sharp, sculpted over time within the crater after the ancient collision. 

NASA's Curiosity rover captured this extremely wide snapshot as it traversed its extraterrestrial stomping grounds in Gale Crater this February. The agency has since converted that data into a 30-second immersive video, which you can watch further down in this story. 

SOURCE: https://mashable.com/article/nasa-mars-curiosity-rover-panoramic-video

No need to ID who "he" is....

 ‘I Even Believe He Is Destroying the American Presidency’

May 23, 2025

It COULD have been MUCH Worse....

 NY Times STORY about a ship captain who fell asleep.....whoops!

An aerial view shows a large container ship having run around bow-first next to a small wooden house.

tRump

 I am lowering my abhorrence of all things tRump for a moment to point out an excellent N.Y. Times analysis HERE:

"Geoffrey Kabaservice, the vice president for political studies at the Niskanen Center, a center-left libertarian think tank, wrote by email:

Will the Trump presidency be as destructive as James Buchanan’s presidency, which led directly to the Civil War?

What I think we can say with confidence is that no president in living memory has attacked the sources of American strength and dynamism in the way that Trump already has done. In particular, his withdrawal from American global leadership and his sabotage of American scientific and technological pre-eminence — at precisely the moment we are vying with China for superiority in those areas — has no parallel."

May 19, 2025

The South's Advantages

 

"Right-to-work laws, cheap energy, affordable housing, low-cost land, fast permitting, low taxes, immigration. That’s a powerful combination, and it has had big effects. In 1992, there was not a single auto plant in Alabama. Today, Alabama is the No. 1 auto-exporting state, producing more than 1 million vehicles a year. That’s brought more than 50,000 jobs and billions of dollars in investment. Instead of a Big Three, it has a Big Five (Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Mazda) along with an ever-expanding web of suppliers. This is just one example of the South’s burgeoning economic prowess."

SOURCE: HERE.

SPACE SHOT

 


Why it's so special: If you need an excuse to visit the Southern Hemisphere, the Hubble Space Telescope has just provided one. This spectacular new image, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, showcases the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the biggest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It is visible only from the Southern Hemisphere.

This dense star field appears as a big, fuzzy patch in the night sky from anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. Hubble's new view uses five filters to isolate different wavelengths of light, including ultraviolet and infrared light, which the human eye cannot see.

The result is a starry cloudscape of wispy gas that resembles multicolored cotton candy against a background of orange and blue stars. There's also a zoomable version available online.

Previous Earliest Freeze....will this year beat it?

 Earliest first freeze - October 19th, 2022.


 

May 18, 2025

Rural religious colleges

 "Lord, hear our prayer for St. Ambrose and Mount Mercy University," the young voice said, "that the grace of the Holy Spirit may help us to follow God's plan for our new partnership."

The speaker, a student, was talking about efforts to unite St. Ambrose University, where this weeknight Mass was being held, with fellow Catholic university Mount Mercy.

Small religious schools in rural states are shutting down at an accelerating rate, a fate these two are attempting to avoid.

 FULL story is HERE.

Spring Hill College in Mobile is one of the Religious Rural colleges trying to stay open.

May 17, 2025

Back "The Blue"?

 

SOURCE: AL.COM story

Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, even called it “a license to kill Black people” because he said Black people are more likely to be shot or hurt by a police officer who makes a bad decision out of fear or racism.

We don’t get the benefit of the doubt,” Smitherman said. “I don’t care what it is. Black folks don’t get the benefit of the doubt.”

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said it was already rare for police to be charged with crimes when they injure or kill someone through the use of force on their jobs.

“This is not about backing the blue because we all recognize the importance of law enforcement,” England said.

“But as a legislator, as government officials, we also have to represent the average citizen in that same situation.

“So we back the blue. But we also protect the individual rights of people to be from unconstitutional use of force.” 

==================================================

 

National Police Accountability Project

SEVEN Years! "home schooled?"

 

Couple Imprisoned Girl for 7 Years and Kept Her in Dog Cage, Police Say

Investigators, who did not identify the teenager, now 18, said they believed she had been sexually abused by her stepfather.

 

The family appears to have lived at their house on Ridge Avenue since 2017, according to property records. Since then, the only police calls to the home have been for barking dogs in the yard. But whenever the police arrived, Chief Harkins said, the couple quickly put the dogs inside.

No responding officers ever entered the house.

"... they pulled her out of elementary school with the excuse that she would be home-schooled.

FULL STORY HERE.

Dowd on Biden

The last words in a column by Maureen Dowd in today's NY Times:

 ...Bidenworld’s gauzy alternate universe.

OUCH.

Read the entire column HERE.


 

Thanks tRump

 

"Moody’s Ratings has stripped the United States government of its top credit rating, citing successive governments’ failure to stop a rising tide of debt, a surprise move that could complicate President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut taxes and send ripples through global markets.

On Friday, Moody’s lowered the rating from a gold-standard Aaa to Aa1. “Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs,” it said as it changed its outlook on the US to “stable” from “negative”.

May 16, 2025

Recommended Reading

 The Headline (via AL.COM):

 

Baptist pastor admits creating fake social media accounts to attack critics

 

OVERexposed

 May I never see another story about or photo of T--Cruise.

PLEASE?

May 15, 2025

Bessemer Alabama

 There are reports that a huge data center---one of the largest in the U.S.---may be built on 700 acres in little Bessemer, a small city near Birmingham:

 

"...a 700-acre, wooded plot of land that soon may be transformed, through years of construction, into a 4.5-million-square-foot data processing center located just within the city limits of Bessemer, Alabama, a city of about 25,000 southwest of Birmingham. 

If built to planned capacity, the data center would be one of the largest in the United States and could become one of the largest single consumers of electricity in the state."

Source: HERE.

 

May 13, 2025

Ancient Alabama

 

Nearly 200 years ago, Cherokee gathered inside a cave in Alabama and, using their newly minted alphabet, wrote ceremonial messages onto the walls and ceiling, a new study finds. The writings included accounts of Cherokee ancestors and stickball, the predecessor of lacrosse.

Some of the religious messages were written backward, possibly so that spirits in this cave — which the Cherokee might have viewed as a portal to the spirit world — could read them, the researchers said.

Modern researchers have known about these writings since explorers found the markings in Manitou Cave in 2006, but now a group of archaeologists, including those from the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, have worked together to translate the messages. [10 Things We Learned About the First Americans in 2018]

Manitou Cave

May 12, 2025

NY Times Headline

 What's in a name? Pope Leo XIV's choice signals a commitment to social  justice | AP News

In Pope Leo, Some in MAGA Movement See an Antagonist

While President Trump welcomed the U.S.-born cardinal as the new pope, top Trump allies criticized Leo XIV for his similarities to Pope Francis.

 

(Which increases my like for the new Pope!)

May 10, 2025

Will he listen? Of Course Not.

 from an AL.COM story:

 "Americans are also adamant about Trump not seeking a third term.

Although the Constitution is clear that Trump cannot be elected president again, he has floated the idea of running.

Americans want him to stop thinking about it, according to the poll.

About three-fourths of respondents said they don’t want Trump seeking a third term.

A majority of Republicans -- 54% -- also said Trump should not run again."


New City Flag?

 A competition is underway to select a new Montgomery City Flag, but be ready to do some serious writing to win

The rules include this:

Participants will write a 250 page essay explaining their vision for a new flag to the best of their ability and submit a drawing to the city clerk.

250 pages? Let me add a new rule: EVERY current city council member and the mayor must do the same, or lose their position.

BTW there are 1,320 words in the declaration of independence.

(The organizers say they are requiring an essay of no more than 250 WORDS.)